The Islamic State: Why It Is Staying, Why It Is Expanding, and Why No One Is Really Fighting It

Why do all the powers supposedly
arrayed against the terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State
(IS) seem incapable to date of effectively hitting its strongholds in Syria?

Is it fear of civilian
casualties, which are unavoidable in any large-scale military operation? This
might indeed be a factor in the case of the United States, France and the UK,
which have scrupulous legal rules and militaries that actually care about such
things. But this cannot explain the behavior of Russia and the Assad regime
which, it should be clear by now, care not a whit for such “modern” and
“Western,” not to mention “impractical,” concerns. Indeed, the willingness of
both to inflict such casualties, often intentionally, is on display every day
and is well-documented.

I do not believe that fear of
civilian casualties fully explains Western behavior either. After all, there
are quite a few installations where IS maintains a presence that are located
outside densely populated areas and that could, I suspect, be targeted with
minimal human collateral damage. But striking these installations carries
risks and costs far beyond any immediate loss to IS.

So, what is it that lurks behind
the near universal decision to avoid bombing these installations and IS
strongholds, except on a minimalist basis? The short answer, I suspect, is
something quite sinister that is worth airing openly: the Islamic State has a
kind of doomsday threat that has all of the intervening powers over a barrel.

The Islamic State, after a long
period of quiet preparation, managed to burst dramatically onto the scene in
both Syria and Iraq, succeeding within a few short months in establishing and
consolidating its hold over major swaths of territory that, in Syria in
particular, included all major oil and natural gas infrastructure in the
country. It also included a number of key dams, including Sadd Al-Tabqa,
Syria’s biggest dam.

This control of key assets gives
ISIS a major trump card in its dealing with its enemies, domestic and foreign.
Should push come to shove, it has the ability to obliterate these vital assets
within days, if not hours, plunging the whole country into darkness, destroying
critical agricultural lands, and interrupting water supplies and services,
effectively setting the clock back on development in the country by a century.
The cost of repairing all this will be astronomical, and Syria simply does not
have the requisite resources to cover even a small fraction of it.

More importantly, those
capabilities are simply a means to an end, and whether the ultimate end is
bolstering the Assad regime, defeating IS, or both, Russia is not only far from
achieving its goals, it will never achieve it. Whether Putin realizes this or
not, whether he has drunk his own Kool-Aid, is a separate question.

As for Iran, even the cash inflow
it expects to receive as a result of the nuclear deal with the U.S. and
partners will not be enough to cover modernization of its own energy
infrastructure, let alone such a major investment in Syria.

Even the natural gas reserves
Syria has off its shores will not help. Syria will not be in a position to tap
into them for at least a decade, at the earliest, and that particular development
may not be something that its own allies, Iran and Russia, will want to see so
soon—not, that is, unless they have total control of production and
distribution.

Syria is currently a shattered
imploding state, but its ability to keep gasping for air and to keep on
functioning at all depends in no small part on the oil it procures from IS, and
on its ability to avoid major confrontations with it. The result is that
whatever skirmishes happen between the two sides at this stage seem to come by
way of negotiating their eventual borders, as each side strives, their rhetoric
and whatever political process in play notwithstanding, to carve out its own
enclave, its own state to be.

For its part, Israel might end up
choosing to get more actively involved in the struggle in order to create a
buffer zone that can shield it from any future challenges to its security from
both the Islamic State and Hezbollah. Israel is also facing domestic pressure
to protect Druze communities in Southern Syria. We may not be far from Israeli
intervention as well.

Considering all this, as well as the recent changes in the U.S. position on regime
change and Assad’s removal from power, it seems reasonable to conclude that
the Obama administration realizes what is involved in this matter at this
stage, including the nature of the calculations driving each side, and
specifically, what IS can do in Syria and parts of Iraq should it feel an
existential threat from any side. This is why the U.S. and its allies seem to
be avoiding conducting major strikes against IS strongholds, and why they seem
to have decided to limit their involvement in the Syrian scene to a strategy of
slow-motion targeted showdown with IS. The hope here might be to facilitate the
implosion of IS in a manner that could help ward off the catastrophic scenario
for Syria described earlier.

But this is wishful and downright
delusional thinking. A few setbacks in Syria and Iraq, such as the loss of the Tishreen Dam in northern Syria, and the town of Ramadi in Iraq, no matter how major they might
seem at first, do not constitute an existential threat to IS, as it still has
the ability to retrench then come back and reconquer lost territory at some
point, as they recently showed in the town of Qarayatein in central Syria,
which IS has taken back in August, lost parts of it in early December, and isnow launching operations to retake it. Only a serious
existential threat, that is, one in which ISIS realizes that it can no
longer retake territory or gain new ground, will trigger the apocalypse
scenario. Unless there is some catastrophic collapse of the command structure,
IS leaders will likely be able to see the writing on the wall in advance giving
them enough time to implement their doomsday strategy.

So, in reality, the current
American and allied policy in Syria boils down to accepting both the Assad
regime, under Russia-Iranian tutelage, and the Islamic State.
It will be up to a future administration to decide whether to try and work out
a different scenario or to accept the fait accompli which the
Obama administration has given us.

Even a massive Western military
intervention at this stage, including tens of thousands of boots on the ground,
and a military strategy designed to secure critical sites within hours coupled
with a major multi-pronged ground offensive may not be enough to avert
catastrophe in Syria; the Islamic State and illiberal forces far and wide
were given enough time to maneuver us into this dilemma. Moreover, and if I am
to believe my contacts on the ground, many major oil installations and the dams
seem to be already rigged with explosives, and it may not take much time to
blow them all up.

Beyond these token steps, neither
side can actually do anything to seriously undermine IS presence in Syria at
this stage; and while the motives might be different, with the U.S. and
its allies more worried about the potential humanitarian cost for Syrians, and
Russia and its allies more worried about the material costs of it all, the
result is the same: rhetoric, propaganda, mutual accusations, and doublespeak
notwithstanding, both sides seem to have reconciled themselves to living with
the Islamic State for the foreseeable future. The fact that the UN itself has
negotiated a deal between the regime and IS to move IS fighters’ families from
Damascus to Raqqa seems to come as a reflection of this spirit of
normalization.

As a longtime Syrian prodemocracy
activist, who is on his way to becoming an American citizen, coming to terms
with this reality poisons my very soul. But denying reality never leads to any
good. A mess was created in Syria, and the world, and there are plenty of sides
and forces to blame, and there are quite a few implications with which we have
to deal on all levels: political, ethical, social, legal, economic and
security-related. Indeed, the consequences of failing to follow up adequately
on the change in Libya and to act in a timely fashion in Syria to stop what was
both foreseeable and preventable will haunt us for decades to come.

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

I am a Syrian-American Author and Blogger, and I currently work as a political analyst at Alhurra. The Delirica is a blog that relates my personal views and takes on current developments which do not necessarily reflect those espoused by any institution with which I am affiliated. My most recent publication is titled “The Irreverent Activist” and is available on Amazon.

The Delirica

Throughout the years, I have operated a variety of political, intellectual and artistic blogs in both Arabic and English. However, I am currently relying on The Delirica as my main personal online outlet for political analysis in English. All my previous online writings in English can be accessed at Ammar.World, The Daily Digest of Global Delirium and related sites. Arabic readers should refer to Hartaqah.